No matter where you look these days, there's a profound sense here in the west that the people no longer having any tangible control over what our governments do. Sure, we are allowed to vote every once in a while, but effectively, most of our countries are governed by backroom deals and corporate interests. If matters really do get out of hand, how do we fight this? Well, with technology of course!

Look at the blow back of the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions, they achieved little but lots of killing.

Certainly not so simple for the French - its upheaval ultimately also led to radical long-term social and political changes which you probably now take for granted, as the outline for societies or nations. Or emergence of middle class, and its voice.

The Russian is... weird. We are talking here, before it, about a quite backwards place in a semi-colonial dependency. And, afterwards, it brought some of the greatest ironies of history (NVM turning the place into a major power, that's nothing): life expectancy in the area of Soviet Union increased dramatically under Stalin, despite the victims. Also: yes, heavy censorship ...and also the first literate generation.
(and anyway, it unraveled the way it did as hoped by the 'traditionalist' Prussian kinda-backers of Bolsheviks, preferring them over the earlier Provisional Government of 1917; and because it was all in turn a blow-back of tsar & Okhrana ...yup, vicious cycles)

The effects of Chinese one are still unraveling...

But yeah, evolutions tend to promote not the "best" people, but the most ruthless ones.